Eight arrested in slaying of Russian councilman

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MOSCOW Zooming around in a Rolls-Royce and boasting of ties to Chechnya's strongman ruler, Mikhail Pakhomov didn't live the life of the average provincial lawmaker. He didn't die the death of one either.

Pakhomov, 37, a councilman from the industrial city of Lipetsk, 215 miles south of Moscow, was found beaten to a pulp at the bottom of a barrel of cement Monday after what police say was a business deal gone wrong – and a kidnapping that went even worse.

Evgeny Kharitonov, a former senior official in the Moscow regional government, was arrested at an airport Monday and charged with organizing Pakhomov's kidnapping over an $80 million debt. A warrant was issued Tuesday for his partner, Sergei Krasovsky. Four other men are charged with the murder-kidnapping, and another three with a related theft.

Pakhomov ran Liter, a construction and transport company, though he had been arrested on suspicion of robbery and kidnapping, but never charged.

When he resisted, police said, the kidnappers – unemployed men from the Moscow area – hit his head against a car door so hard that he bled to death.

When they arrived in Moscow, police said, the kidnappers refused to go back to Lipetsk to fetch documents from Pakhomov's car, which they had forgotten to do. Kharitonov and Krasovsky then paid other men about $2,000 to go back and get them, according to local media.

But while driving back to Moscow, investigators said, the men were pulled over for speeding by traffic police, who found Pakhomov's passport in their car. The men then led police to the other suspects.

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